


After All This Time

by falchionpunch



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Crimson Flower, Gen, Multi, Time Loop, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 09:22:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20598431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falchionpunch/pseuds/falchionpunch
Summary: Byleth returns to Derdriu. Again.





	After All This Time

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 14, Crimson Flower route. No explicit spoilers, but some predictable spoilers are implied.

How many times was it now? Byleth had been to Derdriu countless times now for countless reasons. Often with Claude, nearly as often with Edelgard.

They didn't like coming here with El. They'd do anything to keep her safe, but they'd also do anything to protect Claude, and Dimitri, and everyone they'd ever taught or worked alongside at the monastery. Someday, they hoped, they'd actually succeed. For now they were here, again, in the midst of war, again, fighting to wrest the city from Claude. Again.

Byleth knew full well this could go two ways. El would always win, so long as she was beside her teacher. The only unknown was how badly Claude would lose. Would it be the city, or his life? He wasn't like Dimitri, so motivated by rage and grief that he could never yield so long as both he and Edelgard were alive. El, too, when not at Byleth's side, was too ruthlessly determined in her ideals that she was near impossible to save. They tried, and occasionally succeeded, but when the path you choose walk is paved with corpses you created, the survivors aren't likely to let you live when you reach a dead end.

But Claude... Claude wasn't like the other two, at least not in his methods. He and Edelgard had similar ideals, a near identical vision for Fódlan's future, but Claude always tried to get there with much less bloodshed. He certainly wasn't above it, and in fact he was frequently a major obstacle to saving El's life, but it was never his first tactic. Byleth knew he used them, and often, but if it meant less death, they didn't care. They'd be a pawn in anyone's game if it meant no one had to die.

Methodically, unthinkingly, they moved through the battlefield, all this weighing on them. They could almost hear their father chastise them--_someone else I can never protect_\--because lack of focus is the difference between life and death for a mercenary (or a knight?), but it was all so routine now: over there, a soldier will approach that building and get swarmed by reinforcements they hadn't accounted for. Up there, that wyvern will fly too close to the imperial archers, and fall rider and all into the ocean. That house will catch fire, taking everything from yet another civilian family. That soldier will scream, wailing at the loss of their partner who had been with them the entire war, until now. It was brutal and horrific.

And utterly mundane. 

None of that mattered. They needed to find Claude.

They knew where he should be, and that he should stand out clearly on his brilliant white wyvern, but he had a way of disappearing into the crowd, with the only sign of his presence being enemy soldiers riddled with bright red arrows. Sometimes when they found him, the wyvern was already gone. (Let go? Taken down? Byleth didn't want to know.) Sometimes he was gravely wounded and couldn't be saved. Sometimes El or Hubert found him first, and Byleth never got the chance to find him.

But sometimes...sometimes, like today, he was soaring above the din, Failnaught blazing in hand, fending off droves of imperial forces. Byleth sprinted forward, tightly gripping the Sword of the Creator, when a blast of purple magic exploded over the wyvern's underside. It plummeted, along with Byleth's heart as they watched. Externally, they maintained their composure and ran towards the source of the magic instead--one of Arundel's strange masked mages.

"Well done!" Byleth commended them, though praising them felt sickening. "I'll take him from here. More Almyran troops are approaching to the rear. Go intercept them."

The mage nodded, expression a mystery as they warped away to another part of the city. Byleth again turned their attention to Claude, who was now on his feet, but tending to his injured steed. Or he appeared to be, but as soon as Byleth looked back to him, his eyes were already on them, face bearing the same unreadable smile they had seen so many times.

"Hey, teach!" he called. And loosed an arrow.

Byleth already knew this would happen. It had happened before. Once or twice they'd needed to turn back the hands of time, but today they slashed the arrow out of the air and sprinted towards him. More arrows came to greet them, but they were easily sidestepped or dispatched like the first. With a practiced flick of the wrist, Byleth extended the Sword of the Creator like a whip towards Failnaught and yanked it from his hands.

As it clattered to the ground beside them, they dodged to the side as a sword cut through the air where they had just been standing. “Not bad, teach! But you’ll see why you should have chosen me instead of Edelgard,” Claude said, sword now in hand, unbothered by the loss of his previous weapon.

Byleth swung at him but also only found empty air. He had no idea. They _ had _chosen him, many, many times over. Just not this time. Not that that ever made this hurt any less. No matter how many times they fought Claude, or Dimitri, or El, it burned fiercely. Each attempt to save one always felt like a betrayal of the other two. Why did they always have to fight the ones they’d let down before they even had a chance at sparing them? Could they be spared at all?

The sound of their clashing swords was lost in the chaos of the battlefield, but each blow Byleth parried sent shockwaves through their entire upper body. “Stand down, Claude!” they said through gritted teeth as their swords collided.

He scoffed. “You know I can’t do that. Everyone’s counting on me.” 

“If everyone needs you,” their swords clanged again, “that’s all the more reason to quit while you still can,” they retorted, trying to keep the desperation out of their voice. They’d been through this so many times it was like reciting lines in a play. So why was it always so difficult?

He just laughed. “I can’t fall here.”

He said that every time. He was always wrong.

For no matter how firmly Claude believed himself in that moment, they both knew close combat was not one of his strengths. Byleth had more experience, both from their years as a mercenary and from the sheer number of times they'd done this battle. They dodged and blocked each other’s swings as if choreographed, but Byleth could tell Claude was beginning to falter.

No need to draw this out any further. Rather than blocking his next attack, Byleth dodged by moving towards him and closing what little distance remained between them. Now much closer, they struck him with an open palm under the chin--_ not too hard, I'm trying to save him-- _followed by a closed fist to the chest. While he was disoriented and winded, they swept his legs from under him with one of their own, causing him to fall heavily to the ground.

Suddenly exhausted, Byleth nearly collapsed too, but managed to control their fall so that Claude ended up pinned beneath them. With one hand beside his head and the other holding the Sword of the Creator with the tip at his throat, they pleaded quietly, "Please, yield."

Claude looked up at them in shock, completely silent. Why was he surprised? Then Byleth saw a drop of water on his face. Then another, and another. Were they _ crying _? After all this time, after all the occasions they'd repeated this same encounter, why now?

Claude's face slowly settled back into his easy smile, but there was a gentleness in his eyes that wasn't often there. "Of course, my friend," he said.

The gentleness left immediately even though the smile remained, and Byleth knew him well enough to know it was a mask for pure confusion. They froze. _My friend._ He never called them that unless Byleth sided with him. Did he know? He couldn't have, otherwise why would he be as confused as Byleth was right now? Or could he somehow be aware of the countless timelines Byleth had abandoned, even if only subconsciously? Did he retain some deeply buried memories of those other lives? Of the times when they _ were _friends, or where they were--

The moment had passed. "Hey, teach," he said, as if nothing had happened, as if there weren't still a battle raging around them. "If you really do want to let me go, you gotta get up."

Mechanically, Byleth stood up, and without thinking, offered him a hand to help him to his feet. He took it and stood, then abruptly pulled them toward him and wrapped them in tightly in a hug. Softly, he whispered, "Thank you, my friend."

It was too much. What did he know? Was he being genuine? Or had he seen the effect of his previous statement and was trying to use that in some way, even if he didn't fully understand what had happened?

But just for a moment… For just one moment, Byleth didn’t want to think about any of that. Their sword fell to the ground as they returned the hug just as tightly. They cried silently into his shoulder, a flood of tears they’d been holding back for eons, then...

They summoned the goddess’s power,_ their _power, and suddenly they were both back on the ground again. 

"If you really do want to let me go, you gotta get up."

Again they stood mechanically, but this time left both hands at their side. Unperturbed, Claude got to his feet and dusted himself off. "Thanks, teach. I'll call off the troops. I know when I'm beaten. Tell Edelgard’s she’s won."

Byleth nodded, face blank as ever. 


End file.
